I've been using EAC with "user defined encoder" lame (v. 3.99.5) to import a lot of my cds for importing and playback on my iPod Touch (newest).I'm having great trouble getting all of the tag information (or, the information I want) to appear within the files once imported to iTunes.

I think I'm getting the bit rate I want, and the cover art IS being embedded and showing up within iTunes (and subsequently on the iTouch), but here are the issues:

The created mp3 folders and files look like this, which is exactly what I want...eg,

In other words, I want the album year to appear before the album name, so that I can sort it by year (and play back chronologically), and I want the track titles to be appended with the running length, surrounded by parentheses, then the artist name to appear again at the end of the file.

BUT, once I import these folders/files into iTunes, the date does not appear before the album name, the running time of the tracks does not appear, and the artist name is not appended to the end of the file.

I've tried letting lame write the tags, trying, alternately, these 2 strings, which were suggested on this site:

Now, as I said, the created files look exactly the way I want, it's just that some of this information isn't being added to iTunes when I import the files.

When using CDEX program, I'm able to get all of this information to appear within iTunes, but I must subsequently use another app (MP3Tag) to add the cover art.

I like the fact that EAC can do all of this, without the need for an additional step.

Ideally, I would be most grateful if someone could tell me how to get this information to appear properly, and perhaps let me know the recommended settings for bit rate.

Here is the MediaInfo for one of the tracks...do these settings look good? I want a manageable file size, but also good sound quality. I'm happy with my settings, but am open to suggestions if anyone feels they can be improved upon.

BUT, once I import these folders/files into iTunes, the date does not appear before the album name

Ideally, to get the desired format of things like this to show in iTunes (or any other player) you configure the player to format them. Your tagging looks fine. If iTunes isn't configurable in this way, then you can work around it by prepending the date to the album name (as you did in Mp3tag). To do that, you would replace

--tl "%albumtitle%"

with

--tl "%year% - %albumtitle%"

QUOTE

the running time of the tracks does not appear, and the artist name is not appended to the end of the file.

Again, you might have to make it part of the track title if you need this and iTunes doesn't give you the option.